Wealthy Exit Stocks for Jewelry, Art, Trophy Real Estate

The wealthy are dumping their stocks in favor of jewelry, art, and trophy properties.

Two recent surveys illustrate the reluctance for stocks, CNBC reports. One, from Harrison Group and American Express Publishing, shows that the wealthy have slashed the amount of their savings devoted to stocks and other securities to 46 percent from 76 percent in 2007.

Those numbers applied to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, who own more than half of all stocks.

The second study, from Spectrem Group, shows that investor confidence among those with at least $1 million in financial assets fell in April for the first time since last summer.

Recent news stories give some idea as to where that money is going. Edvard Munch's "The Scream" painting sold earlier this month to an anonymous buyer for $119.9 million.

Two apartments in Manhattan went for more than $50 million each. Billionaire investor Howard Marks bought one of them.

And Sotheby’s sold $108 million worth of collectible jewelry this week, a new record for the auction house. The show stopper was a diamond first worn by Marie de Medici in 1610 that sold for $9.7 million.

Michael Casey of The Wall Street Journal doesn’t see this as a good thing.

“The Munch sale offers a window into the gaping inequalities of our age, where the post-crisis policy framework has ensured that an already wide global wealth gap has only widened,” he writes.